Apertured nonwoven fabrics are used in environments where it is desired to combine the properties of a fluid pervious outer layer for contact with the skin of a user with an absorbent layer having fluid absorption capacity. Such apertured nonwoven fabrics find use as a topsheet in diapers, sanitary napkins, and adult incontinence products, etc.
Traditionally, apertured nonwoven fabrics are formed by hydraulic processes such as hydroentangling a fibrous web with an apertured pattern or spunlacing, by mechanical processes such as perforating or punching a nonwoven fabric, or by thermo-mechanical processes such as hot pin perforation, embossed roll calendaring, etc. Hydraulic processes require rather costly equipment and complex processing operations. Mechanical or thermo-mechanical processes also require multiple processing steps, e.g., by first forming a bonded nonwoven fabric then perforating or aperturing the same.
Some thermo-mechanical processes, such as taught in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,507,943 and 3,542,634, can bond and aperture a fibrous layer in one step by pressure fusing the fibers of the nonwoven layer between contact points of embossed rolls or land-groove rolls and at the same time forming apertures therethrough by melting with sufficient heat and pressure, shearing action, etc. However, a high amount of heat and pressure is required to produce well-formed through-holes in the nonwoven layer. Other processes, such as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,184,902 to Karami or U.S. Pat. No. 4,780,352 to Palumbo, form a topsheet in one processing step by perforating and/or spot bonding a fluid-pervious nonwoven layer with a plastic intermediate layer. However, the holes or aperture areas generated may not be of sufficient dimension or well-formed shape, and may require additional processing such as hot blowing or stretching to generate apertures of sufficient size and shape.
It is therefore a principal object of the present invention to produce an apertured nonwoven fabric through a one-step cost-effective process using a simplified technique for generating apertures of sufficient size and shape. It is a particular object that such process take advantage of a physical interaction between polymeric materials of different melting temperatures under application of heat and pressure from the calendaring points of a calendar roll to accomplish simultaneously bonding of the fibers and forming of apertures through the nonwoven fabric.